


Nicotine

by DemonDeepFried



Series: Song-Fics [3]
Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Smoking, Songfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-24
Updated: 2015-06-24
Packaged: 2018-04-06 00:53:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,256
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4201632
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DemonDeepFried/pseuds/DemonDeepFried
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>SONG-FIC ('Nicotine'- Panic! at the Disco)- Pietro’s crush on you has mounted and mounted and he can’t bear it sometimes. It’s been a while since he last smoked, but recently there have been trails of cigarettes all down the Avengers Tower’s corridors and everyone’s getting suspicious of the Sokovian speedster.<br/>Can he give it up? If you’re the reward?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Nicotine

**Author's Note:**

> So, there are a few triggers in this if you trying to quit and a hell of a lot of angst but a happy ending. Also, the reader has telekinetic powers, it only comes up a couple of times but there you go :) Enjoy! Comments are welcome with hugs and cookies xx

Pietro was crushing.

Every time you smiled, it was as though the room was enveloped by the sun, beams of light thrown everywhere.

The twinkle of your laugh made his heart thump and an involuntary smile to spread across his lips.

He could imagine- while gazing into your eyes as you chatted to him passionately- that the stars themselves envied the beauty and grace in your eyes.

Just the way you’d brush his hand minutely, when accepting something (often a carton of milk in the kitchen at breakfast) from him, would leave him breathless and tingling.

When he spent time with you in the lab as you worked on your experiments, he couldn't take his eyes off the way your hands moved and created intricacy in its barest form.

Whenever you snuggled into him of a night, whilst the two of you were watching a film or TV show, his breath would hitch and his throat would run dry and the overwhelming urge to just stroke his hands through your hair would overtake him.

_Pietro was in love._

 

 

* * *

 

 

But he was also suffering a tormenting inner-conflict. He loved you-  _he was head over freaking heels_ \- though he knew that you wouldn’t feel the same way and it killed him. 

****_Cross my heart and hope to die  
Burn my lungs and curse my eyes  
I've lost control and I don't want it back_

And when Pietro got stressed, he tended to fall off the wagon.

After his sister finally got him to stop smoking a few years ago, he hadn’t smoked once since.

“Whoops,” he mumbled to himself as he cupped his hand around the butt of the cigarette and lit it with a stolen lighter.

That first draw felt like he had been craving it since his last.

Lolling his head back against the outside of the Avengers Tower, he looked out over the balcony to the night sky and drew another drag as he checked -again- that the inside lights were still off. No need to have Wanda worrying unnecessarily, after all, he was only having one to help his stress.

**_I'm going numb, I've been hijacked  
It's a fucking drag _ **

Just one.

Sighing, he stepped forwards and leant on the balcony railing by his muscular forearms. It’s not like he was ignorant, Pietro knew exactly all the side effects of smoking- Wanda had bombarded him with fact after gruesome fact when she was trying to make him quit- he just stopped caring so much when it made his shoulders loosen a little and ease the storm in his head.

It would never make him lose the feelings he had for you. His heart knew exactly what it wanted and wouldn’t give up, even if it developed smoking-related cancer, but his head knew exactly how likely that adoration would go unrequited. Thus, when the smoke numbed him from the inside, he thanked it immensely and rewarded it with another draw.

When he finished that cigarette not half a minute later-  _because apparently his body liked to do everything fast-_ he stood unmoving for a whole ten seconds before racing down to the corner shop in the city to buy a pack.

**_I taste you on my lips and I can't get rid of you  
So I say damn your kiss and the awful things you do _ **

_Just one more._

 

* * *

  

As it turns out ‘just one more’ actually means just...749 more.

It had been four days since his first.

By this point, the Avengers Tower smelled predominantly of smoke and the plant pots outside on the balcony were filled to the brim with cigarette butts. While the speedster hadn’t actually come out and admitted that it was him who was smoking more than a chimney, everyone had pretty much already figured it out on their own.

Stumbling into the kitchen, where all of the Avengers already sat around the table, Pietro opened the fridge and took out the carton of milk and placed it on the side. Coughing into his fist, his body doubled over slightly and he realised just how much he sounded like a homeless man on the street coughing his lungs up.

Clearing his throat gruffly, he  _speedily_ poured himself out a bowl of cereal and collapsed groggily into a chair at the furthest end of the table.

“That’s a hacking cough you got there,” Tony commented, only looking up from his toast to shoot a knowing smirk at him.

The engineer received an irritated grunt in reply.

“But I suppose that’s what you get when you smoke almost 200 cigarettes a day,” he went on, shrugging and tutting quietly.

Pietro ground his teeth and shot Stark a dark look that really meant ‘stop talking now if you wish to keep breathing’. “Shut up, Stark,” he growled in his thick accent.

Narrowing her eyes at both the renowned scientist and her brother, Wanda spat, “Both of you shut up. Pietro, we’re going to have a word.” And with that, Pietro removed himself from the table and followed his sister out of the door.

When they were out of earshot (it didn’t help when every Avenger was pressed against the door trying to hear the conversation) she rounded on him and snarled, “What are you doing, Pietro?! Do you not remember how long it took to get you to stop smoking?! And all that it did to you?! You’re a mutant! A  _fast_ mutant! You smoke about 200 a day and you know how it affects your powers.”

Rolling his eyes, but remaining silent because he did remember and he did know, Pietro just nodded.

“You can’t control them when you smoke and you start coughing and you get tired quicker and your lungs don't work as well as they should and-and...in case you don’t remember, when your breathing is playing up and you try to run at a thousand miles a minute, you collapse!” Wanda shouted, tears stinging her eyes that Pietro noticed with a fresh wave of guilt.

With a deep sigh, he placed his hands gently on her arms and told her, “Wanda, I’m sorry but its the only thing that’s making me feel remotely human right now. I just...I just  _need_ it. Please, just stop. I’m perfectly fine, see?” He waved a hand at his chest and tried to force a smile- which his all-too-knowing sister didn’t buy for a second- it didn’t help at all that a cough tried to erupt its way up his throat at that moment and he had to choke it down, sounding a little like a vomiting cat.

Narrowing her eyes at him, she just shook her head and marched back into the kitchen. 

“Sister...” he tried to call after her, ignoring the rest of the Avengers’ ridiculous attempts at making their eavesdropping less obvious, but when that failed he simply cursed under his breath and sped off for another cigarette over the balcony.

 ** _ _ _Yeah, you're worse than nicotine, nicotine  
Yeah, you're worse than nicotine, nicotine__  _**  

 

* * *

  

The kinds of problems Wanda had been referring to raised their ugly heads only two days afterwards, when the total cigarette count had topped 1500 and then some. He was smoking more and more every day, often several at once, as he sped around the Tower trying to avoid everything and everyone.

He’d been running laps up and down all the corridors in the Avengers Tower, when he felt his chest give a painful jolt and fell promptly to his knees with a sickening groan.

Supposing fate just worked that way, he had collapsed right in the large open lounge opposite the kitchen where the rest of the team were sitting. As soon as they heard him and then saw him crouched on the ground clutching his chest, they all broke into motion and rushed towards him.

Whatever differences they may have had, Stark was still the first one to roll him over and check him for damage, asking, “What hurts? Tell me what hurts and I can help you better.”

Banner joined him, moving the others to the side and took up post beside Pietro, checking for abnormal breathing- which was already obvious from ten feet away because the speedster’s breath was coming irregularly and strained a million miles an hour.

Pushing past the rest of your team mates, you reached the mutant’s side and grabbed his hand in yours, searching his face and talking quietly to him, “Quickie? What is it?”

Wincing as he did so, Pietro pushed himself so that he was sitting awkwardly- not letting go of your hands- and swallowed hard before mumbling, “Umm, I don’t know. My-my chest hurts? But it is fine now, you don’t need to worry. I’m sorry, I-I just fell.”

Nobody saw Wanda quietly vacate the room, hand to her mouth and tears glistening her eyes. Well, no one but Pietro, and it hurt him more than the pain in his chest.

“Pietro,” you said quietly, focussing his gaze back on you, “Look at what’s happening to you.  _Please_  stop smoking. Even for someone who wasn’t running the equivalent to a hundred circuits of Texas every day, this many cigarettes would be killing them. How many are you even up to now? Have you seen the balcony lately? It looks like the inside of tobacco factory.”

 ** _It's better to burn than to fade away_**  
 ** _It's better to leave than to be replaced_**  
 ** _I'm losing to you, baby, I'm no match_**  

The man in front of you blushed and looked down, avoiding your gaze.

Sighing and tilting his head up with a finger under his chin, you continued, “Quickie, you’re gonna kill yourself before you’re thirty at this rate.”

He couldn’t help but lose himself in your eyes then. 

So beautiful, so filled with concern.

_For him._

But no, there was hurt in there too. Hurt and pain and defeat.  _The smallest glimmer of hope and determination_ , but what did that matter when your eyes lost their usual merry glitter and it was because of him. 

Shrugging off your hand and standing up sharply, he raced out of the room and to the corner store in town, that was he was quickly becoming a regular customer of.

 _ **I'm going numb, I've been hijacked**_  
 _**It's a fucking drag**_  

 

* * *

  

The second time Wanda’s warning proved right, the total was up to 3482 four days later and Pietro was in the middle of a SHIELD meeting about their next mission. He’d ran there after running his usual laps non-stop around the Avengers Tower.

As Fury spoke, Pietro found that all he could focus on was the gradually increasing ache in his chest. At first he had simply dismissed it as general pain from running under malnutrition or dehydration or fatigue, but it still hadn’t gone away and actually felt worse.

It was when Fury had just started talking about tactics that Pietro felt himself sliding out of the chair and falling into blackness before he felt the impact of the hard floor.

 

“Pietro?”

“ _Pietro_!”

A light slapping on his face roused him and he blinked blearily up at the small cluster of people around him, including you who was the aforementioned slapper of his face.

Sitting up quickly and getting to his feet in an effort to save the little dignity he had left, he hissed when he swayed precariously and had to lean on the table as he clutched at his chest and coughed violently.

“Come on, I’m taking you down to the infirmary,” you told him firmly, taking one of his arms, which he jerked back.

“I’m fine,” he insisted harshly, then winced when he saw the hurt look on your face.

**_I taste you on my lips and I can't get rid of you  
So I say damn your kiss and the awful things you do _ **

Throwing your hands up in defeat, you muttered, “Whatever, Pietro.”

Closing his eyes and gritting his teeth at his own stupidity, Pietro brushed past the rest of the small crowd and fled to the balcony, where he crammed three cigarettes between his lips and lit them. Drawing the first breath with a blissful sigh.

He ignored the twinge of tears.

He already knew he hated himself when he smoked.

It wasn’t him.

It wasn’t the same person.

He hated his bitterness, his defensiveness, his unsociable nature that crept out when he started smoking again. But there was nothing he could do but try to avoid everyone.

 _Even if that meant you, too_.

**_Yeah, you're worse than nicotine, nicotine  
Yeah, you're worse than nicotine, nicotine _ **

  

* * *

  

By Pietro’s second week of smoking (the total having exceeded the ten thousand checkpoint and anyone who still was had seemed to stop counting) you were growing more and more depressed each day. 

The two of you stopped watching your favourite programmes of a night on the TV- even when you stayed up until midnight waiting for just a sign that he remembered, until you gave up and went to bed with a heart that hurt too much.

He came to your lab less and less each day until he stopped coming at all. Before, he had stopped by to see you at least once a day with a cheery smile on his face to relieve you from your work for a short chat. 

The first day you realised that Pietro wouldn’t be coming down at all, you swiped everything off your lab desk and sobbed into your arms.

You missed his cheery smile;

That mischievous twinkle in his ice blue eyes;

The way his silky locks bounced when he ran;

All the terrible jokes he used to say to make you laugh;

How he would blush when you complimented him;

The Mars bars he would steal in collections of ten from the corner shop for you;

His bemused yet engrossed expression when you explained your experiments and the science behind them;

Spending nights on the sofa with him;

Discussing meaningless little things with him.

You missed--

_You missed Pietro,_

and the realisation just made you cry all the more.

  

* * *

 

Wanda had forced Pietro into the infirmary for a check-up by Stark when it had reached 16 days. He was reluctant the entire time, insisting that he was perfectly healthy and that he wasn’t even smoking that much.

“Pietro,” Banner told him seriously as soon as he had found a word in edgeways, “This is very serious. Its only been sixteen days and you’ve smoked over several  _thousand_ cigarettes and still continue to run around as though your lungs are perfectly healthy.”

“They ar-” the Avenger tried to butt in, but to no avail as the doctor went on regardless.

“Any other person would have  _died_ by now and it is only your mutation that’s kept you alive this long,” he explained. “But if you keep going on like this, then soon that won’t even help you. Pietro your lungs may be superhuman but they still can’t survive ten thousand cigarettes in such little time. First of all, I need you to stop running as much-”

“But-!”

“-because you’re only going to destroy your muscle tissue and blood circulation quicker. And then we’re going to try and help you over this,” Banner finished, taking off his glasses and studying the man before him closely. “If I may ask, why did you start smoking again in the first place?”

At this, Pietro’s stare darkened and he spat out, “That is none of your business. Any of you,” before he ran back out and up to the roof.

_**Just one more hit and then we're through**  _

Whipping a pack out of his pocket, he removed three and was just about to place them between his lips when he heard a quiet voice.

“ _Cross my heart and hope to die_  
 _Burn my lungs and curse my eyes_  
 _I've lost control and I don't want it back_.”

The voice was coming from the other side of the roof and Pietro rounded the large glass divider, that housed much of the Tower’s necessities in the form of energy and water- or so he assumed-, to see you lying on your back with your eyes closed, singing almost silently to yourself. Around you, various objects and pieces of furniture were floating in mid-air at the absent twirl of your fingers.

Even in the starlight, Pietro could see the tears glistening your cheeks and had to stop himself from going over to comfort you and tear your hurter apart. After all, why would you want him there? He knew how disgusted of him you were.  
  
_“I'm going numb, I've been hijacked_  
 _It's a fucking drag_ ,” you sang, taking a swig from the liquor bottle Pietro hadn’t seen until now.  
“ _I taste you on my lips and I can't get rid of you_  
_So I say damn your kiss and the awful things you do_.”

The mutant had to physically hold onto the railing of the balcony to stop himself from going over to you and just enveloping your small body into a tight hug and making all of your worries go away, somehow. He couldn’t though. You wouldn’t want that. Not from him.  
  
_“Yeah, you're worse than nicotine, nicotine  
Yeah, you're worse than nicotine, nicotine.”  _ Your voice broke on the last word and you couldn’t carry on through the husk in your throat.

Turning back, Pietro looked down at the three cigarettes between his fingers. 

He didn’t feel like smoking right now.

In that moment of impulse, he tossed them over the roof and jogged down the stairs to get a glass of water from the kitchen, leaving it on your bedside table, alongside a Mars bar from the corner shop. 

 

* * *

 

While training with Pietro one day (after catching up with him and demanding that he do so,) you suddenly looked up to see him with a cigarette drooping from his lips as he held the boxing bag firm for your kick-boxing practice.

“Pietro!” you exclaimed, putting your fists on your hips and glaring at him, “What the hell?!”

Throwing his arms out to the sides, he took the cigarette between the fingers of one hand and shot back with, “What?!” You could hear the defensive note his voice and some of the fire in your eyes simmered away; you didn’t know why he was smoking but when did anyone just do it because they enjoyed the taste?

Shaking your head, you just unwrapped the material from your knuckles and walked out, shooting over your shoulder, “I’m done for today.”

Quicksilver stood there for a moment before growling loudly and tossing the lit cigarette to the ground with violence, proceeding to run - _he lost count how many laps_ \- around the training room with more speed than he usually used.

He lost control sometimes, when he was angry.

Especially when he was angry at himself.

And there was a very good reason why he didn’t exceed the speed he had set himself a long time ago. That was because when he went to the speed he was now, physics remembered to catch up.

Flames erupted around his feet- the flimsy trainers burning away to nothing in seconds- and left a burning trail in the path he had been running. There was the distinct feeling of a pulling sensation that affected everything in the room, pulling it inwards.

His speed was creating a centre-fugal force.

It was tearing the room apart.

_She was disgusted. She thinks its vile. She hates me. She would never love me. She thinks I’m an idiot. She hates it. **'Cause you could never love me back. Cut every tie I have to you.** She can’t stand to be in the same room as me. She finds me disgusting. She would never love me. She thinks its vile. She thinks I’m an idiot. She hates me. She would never love me._

_And I still can’t stop loving her._

“PIETRO!”

The sudden scream made the mutant stopped dead at once and he turned to see you stood at the door, a look on your face somewhere between horror and sadness.

Looking around the room, his jaw dropped when he saw what he’d done. The ceiling was cracking and seemed as though the only thing keeping it from caving in was your telekinetic abilities holding it up. The flooring had all been sucked into the middle and created a pointed mound that reached half-way to the ceiling. Windows everywhere had blown and the shattered glass had collected in the middle. All the expensive training equipment had been torn apart and piled in the centre of the room.

“Oh gods,” he whispered, his voice barely a breath. Sinking his teeth into his bottom lip, he turned on his heel and stormed to his bedroom.

Shaking fingers fumbled over one of the many cigarette boxes balanced precariously on the mountain atop the floor by his bed. He pulled out three and stuck them all in his mouth, speeding to the balcony and lighting them all at once.

Taking a deep drag, he closed his eyes and leant over the balcony.

How could he face them again?

How could he face you?

He had lost control of his power and destroyed the training area. What if he lost control again? What did they think of him?

_Gods, his chest felt like it was on fire._

_' **Cause your love's a fucking dra-**  
_

_Everything hurt, everything ached._

_**But I need it s-**  
_

The cigarettes tumbled to the ground and so did Pietro only moments later, crashing onto the hard floor and fading into unconsciousness as easily as sleeping.

 

* * *

 

When Quicksilver woke, it was almost an entire day later and he was lying in a hospital bed connected to an assortment of various machines and devices. An attempt at trying to sit up, made him notice the buckled bonds that tied him down and he growled wearily.

“Hng?”

A small grumble came from his right and he relaxed a bit to turn and see that you were sitting asleep in the chair beside his bed, resting your head on your arms on the mattress.

Despite everything, a smile twitched his lips as he watched you sleep peacefully, stirring only when he did.

Finally, you opened your eyes and stretched sleepily. Upon seeing Pietro’s awoken state, your face lit up in a smile and you dived forwards, wrapping your arms around his neck and holding him tight. “I’m so glad you’re awake,” you murmured into his neck, letting your eyes fall close again. “I was so scared.”

Breaking apart, the Sokovian frowned and asked, “Why were you scared?”

“I came to your room to see how you were, Pietro,” you told him, unconsciously taking his hand in yours, “You were lying on the floor on the balcony outside. It was freezing, your hands were blue. And, I-I...I couldn’t get you to wake up...” your voice was getting huskier and you couldn’t louden your voice above the hush it was when you added, “Banner told me that there was a chance you wouldn’t wake up. At all.”

A single tear breeched and escaped your notice, trickling down your cheek and making Pietro’s heart heave more than it already was.

Swallowing thickly, he whispered, “I am so sorry, Y/N.” And he was. He really was. 

“Why?” you blurted out, still searching his eyes with your own, “Why did you start in the first place?”

**_Your love's a fucking drag  
But I need it so bad _ **

“Because...” he tried, chewing his lip, “Because I-I fell in love...with someone who I thought -who I  _knew_ - would never reciprocate. And it just hurt so bad...I had one and then...I couldn’t stop.”

“I know what that’s like,” you murmured. “But why did it never cross your mind that just telling them how you feel would be better than this?”

“B-be-because...” he drew a blank.

Steeling your expression, as though fighting to keep on a poker face ( _what does she have to hide?_ ), you told him quietly but firmly, “Just tell them, Pietro.”

 

You hurt so bad.

He loved someone.

He did all this because he loved someone.

And all this time you had been hurting because you had been so selfish.

_**It's better to burn than to fade away** _   
_**It's better to leave than to be replaced** _   
_**I'm losing to you, baby, I'm no match** _

He loved somebody else.

Not you.

Why would it be you?

**_I'm going numb, I've been hijacked  
It's a fucking dra-_ **

All of your thoughts were silenced by the feel of Pietro’s lips on yours. Recovering from the initial shock, you let you eyes slip close and threaded your fingers into his silver locks and started kissing him back. His tongue traced your bottom lip and your parted them to feel his tongue meet yours.

After you finally broke apart, it was panting but with identical grins alighting your faces.

“I love you,” he said, resting his forehead against yours.

Smiling breathlessly, you cupped his cheeks and looked into his eyes when you replied, “I love you, too.”

 

**_Yeah, you're worse than nicotine, nicotine  
_ _Yeah, you're worse than nicotine, nicotine_ **

 

* * *

When Pietro’s collection of cigarettes finally dwindled to nothing- all of the Avengers had worked together to rid the Tower of every last one of them- he was out of the infirmary and back on his feet. While advised to take it easy, everyone noticed the familiar smile come back.

On both yours and Pietro’s faces.


End file.
